1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a semiconductor device, and more particularly, to a flash memory cell and a method of fabricating the same. Although the present invention is suitable for a wide scope of applications, it is particularly suitable for suppressing undesirable leakage current caused by an over-erasure.
2. Discussion of the Related Art
Generally, as a nonvolatile memory device, a flash memory cell having a laminated structure including a floating gate and a control gate maintains a high erasing rate by erasing memory array cells concurrently. The programming of the flash memory cell is carried out when hot electrons are injected into the floating gate from the channel by applying high voltage to the control gate. The ratio of the voltage applied to the floating gate to the voltage applied to the control gate is known as a coupling ratio. As the coupling ratio goes higher, the programming efficiency increases.
The erasure of the flash memory cell is achieved when high voltage is applied to a source region having a deep junction and electrons of the floating gate are injected into the source region or a substrate by the mechanism of Fowler-Nordheim tunneling. Generally, to enhance the erasing efficiency, the thickness of a gate oxide layer at the bottom part of the floating gate has to be reduced. However, the thin gate oxide layer may lower the voltage applied to the floating gate and thus reduce the coupling ratio. Therefore, it is required to maintain a higher coupling ratio to enhance the programming and erasure efficiencies without reducing the thickness of the gate oxide layer.
A conventional flash memory cell and a method of fabricating the same will now be explained with reference to FIG. 1.
FIG. 1 is a cross-sectional view of the conventional flash memory cell. As shown in FIG.1, the conventional flash memory cell includes a semiconductor substrate 11, source and drain regions 24 and 23 in the substrate, a lightly-doped region 25 below the source region, a field oxide layer 13 at a field region of the substrate, a gate oxide layer 15 on the substrate 11 exclusive of a portion on the source and drain regions 24 and 23 and the field oxide layer 13, a floating gate 17 on the gate oxide layer 15, an interlevel insulating layer 19 on the floating gate 17, and a control gate 21 on the interlevel insulating layer.
FIGS. 2A through 2D are cross-sectional views illustrating the process steps for fabricating a conventional flash memory cell.
Referring to FIG. 2A, a field oxide layer 13 for defining an active region of a device is formed on the field region of a P-type substrate 11 using a LOCOS (Local Oxidation of Silicon) process. Then, thermal oxidation is performed on the exposed portion of the substrate 11 to form a gate oxide layer 15. After a polysilicon doped with impurity is deposited on the field oxide layer 13 and the gate oxide layer 15 by CVD (Chemical Vapor Deposition), a floating gate 17 is finally formed by patterning a deposited polysilicon into a stripe shape in a direction parallel to the substrate 11 using photolithography.
Referring to FIG. 2B, an interlevel insulating layer 19 having an ONO (Oxide-Nitride-Oxide) structure is formed on the floating gate 17.
Referring to FIG. 2C, after depositing a polysilicon layer on the interlevel insulating layer 19, a control gate 21 is formed by patterning the deposited polysilicon into a stripe shape in a direction perpendicular to the substrate 11 using photolithography. In this process, portions of the interlevel insulating layer 19, the floating gate 17, and the gate oxide layer 15 exclusive of portions overlapping the control gate 21 are also removed.
Referring to FIG. 2D, source and drain regions 23 and 24 are formed by heavily implanting impurities of N-type, which is the opposite conductivity type of the substrate 11, by using the control gate 21 as a mask. Then, a lightly-doped region 25 for forming a double diffusion drain structure is formed to partly overlap the floating gate 17 by lightly implanting N-type impurities to surround the drain region 24. In this process, the lightly-doped region 25 may be formed prior to forming the source and drain regions 23 and 24.
In the aforementioned flash memory device having the source region 23 connected to the ground, the device is programmed when the voltage Vg applied to the control gate 21 is higher than the voltage Vd applied to the drain region 24. Hot electrons generated in the channel are then injected into the floating gate 17. To erase programmed data in the flash memory cell, with the control gate 21 grounded, or with a negative voltage applied, the voltage Vs is applied to the source region and thus the electrons in the floating gate 17 are tunneled to the source region 23 or the substrate 11.
However, the aforementioned conventional flash memory cell has some problems. For example, since a thin gate oxide layer causes a coupling ratio to be small, the programming efficiency is low. On the other hand, the thick gate oxide layer results in a low erasing efficiency. Furthermore, when the gate oxide layer is too thin, the memory cell may be damaged by hot electrons injected into the floating gate during programming. As a result, the reliability of the cell is low and an over-erasure may also occur during repeated erasures due to hot holes trapped by the gate oxide layer.